Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932511296 ISBN 13: 9781932511291

Publisher: Sarabande Books, 2006

Synopsis

This groundbreaking anthology offers a broad and representative introduction to some of the most exciting, fresh voices on the contemporary poetry landscape by gathering together generous selections from the work of 85 younger American poets.

The poets selected were born after 1960, published their first book within the last 10 years, and have no more than three books published. Some are the recipients of numerous awards, while others, who are making their first appearance, are quickly making significant contributions to twenty-first-century poetry.

The poets include Rick Barot, Joshua Beckman, David Berman, Nick Flynn, Matthea Harvey, Terrance Hayes, Major Jackson, James Kimbrell, D.A. Powell, Spencer Reece, Matthew Rohrer, Rebecca Wolff, Kevin Young, Matthew Zapruder, Andrew Zawacki, and many others.

About this title

About the Author:

Marvin's first book, World's Tallest Disaster, was awarded the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize by Robert Pinksy (Sarabande 2001). In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Georgia Review, Slate, and The Kenyon Review. She is a creative writing professor at the College of Staten Island. Dumanis was the Poetry Curator at Brazos Bookstore, a former Poetry Editor of Gulf Coast, and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Houston. A two-time Academy of American Poets Prizewinner and recipient of Fulbright, Truman Capote, and James Michener Fellowships, he has published his poems in numerous literary journals.

From Publishers Weekly:

How does one communicate the intersection of life and the imagination-its sources, questions and preoccupations? This anthology of new American poets variously, and more often than not, exquisitely explores this puzzle. Comprised of discordant voices-85, to be exact-from the gritty, near-confessional wordplay of Olena Kalytiak Davis and Paisley Rekdal to the terse experiments and mini-saga prose poems of Matthea Harvey and Joel Brouwer, this anthology uncaps the concerns of contemporary life, releasing vapors to mix with the contemporary imagination. (Or, life and imagination as perceived by poets under age 45 and with three or fewer books-for better or worse, the anthology's selection criteria). The imagination rests, as with as with Oni Buchanan's exploration of love-as-yak, or, in Carrie St. George Comer's poems, reels in memory. Other times, emboldened by language, the imagination "weaves / the world together with a quicker blur of armed / seduction" (Brenda Shaughnessy, "Postfeminism"). Even the titles (compare Maurice Manning's "On God" to Timothy Donnelly's "Twenty-Seven Props for a production of Eine Lebenszeit") reveal the historical, philosophical and aesthetic sources of these poems that often speak to "you," the "Bare-faced, flint-hearted, recoilless / Reader" (Olena Kalytiak Davis, "sweet reader, flannelled and tulled"), inviting intimacy, assuming courage and requiring immersion in the moment.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1932511296
• ISBN 13: 9781932511291
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 500
• Editor: Michael Dumanis, Cate Marvin